A Mexican win best director in this year’s 90th Academy Awards.

Guillermo del Toro win best director for The Shape of Water, and marks the fourth time in the last five years that a Mexican filmmaker has won that prize.

Mexican director Guillermo del
Toro had a successful outing at last night’s 90th Academy Awards, taking home
the coveted best director and best picture Oscars for his film The Shape of
Water.

The dark fantasy drama also won
the awards for best original score and best production design. The film had
been nominated in 13 categories.

In his acceptance speech for the
best director Oscar, del Toro began by recognizing his own background and that
of other Mexicans who have forged highly successful careers in the United
States film industry.

“I am an immigrant like Alfonso
[Cuarón] and Alejandro [G. Iñárritu], my compadres, like Gael [García Bernal],
like Salma [Hayek] and like many, many of you . . .” he said.

“In the last 25 years, I’ve been
living in a country all of our own. Part of it is here, part of it is in
Europe, part of it is everywhere. Because I think the greatest thing that art
does, and that our industry does, is erase the lines in the sand . . . when the
world tells us to make them deeper,” the Guadalajara-born director continued.

Both Cuarón and Iñárritu have
previously won the best director Oscar, the former in 2014 for Gravity while
the latter took home the award in 2015 for Birdman and then again in 2016 for
The Revenant.

Del Toro’s win means that Mexican
filmmakers have won the award four times in the last five years. The three
directors are also close friends and are commonly referred to as the “Three
Amigos.”

Their careers are now largely
based in the U.S. but all three made their first films in Mexico, and Cuarón
will release another made-in-Mexico movie later this year. Another of del
Toro’s films, Pan’s Labyrinth, was nominated for best foreign language film in
2007.

Anna Marie de la Fuente, a
journalist who writes about the Latin American film industry for the magazine
Variety, said that “like many immigrants before them, they have been embraced
by Hollywood thanks to their prodigious raw talent, perseverance, hard work
and, in some measure, luck.”

She also said the directors were
helped by initiatives designed to support the Mexican film industry, adding
that the rise of another Mexican star in the mold of Guillermo del Toro, Salma
Hayek or Gael García Bernal is quite possible.

“Mexico has been churning out more
than a hundred films a year thanks to more tax incentives, in particular, one
called Eficine which, since 2006, gives incentives to private investors in
film. So there are many opportunities for new talent to emerge.”

Del Toro’s words upon receiving
the best picture award may provide further impetus for the next generation of
filmmakers.

“. . . Growing up in Mexico I
thought this could never happen, it happens and I want to tell you, everyone
that is dreaming of a parable, of using the genre fantasy to tell the stories
about the things that are real in the world today, you can do it, this is a
door. Kick it open and come in,” he said.

The Shape of Water, del Toro’s
10th feature film, tells the story of a mute woman who befriends and ultimately
falls in love with a merman or “amphibian god” that is being kept at a
top-secret United States government lab in Baltimore in 1962.

It was named best film at the
Venice International Film Festival and won two Golden Globes and del Toro also
won best director at this year’s British Academy Film Awards or BAFTAs.

Another movie with a connection to
Mexico won two Oscars last night.

Coco, a film whose concept is
based on the Day of the Dead, was named best animated feature and one of its
tracks, Remember Me, won best original song.